Everywhere I Go

(Kickstarter update! On the first day we got over $1,000 in pledges!! That puts us almost 1/3rd of the way to the $3,500 goal! Almost all of that first $1K came from regular readers of DGC. MCA Hogarth nabbed the first pledge, quickly followed by Amy, Joe, Cayra, et al… Go check out where we are as of now on Kickstarter. -ctan)

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Two days later Orlando took me to meet Gloria–the woman with the jowly face whom I had met briefly on my first night in Seville.

He brought me to a house across from a university building. Unlike most of the houses in this area which had the door at street level but the living quarters up above, this one had a large ground floor parlor which was her classroom. We went there directly from busking so we were carrying our guitars (as well as a lot of loose cash). Gloria was sitting on a stool in one corner of the room, a ragged oval of cajones around the perimeter.

She had more English than anyone I’d spoken to in weeks, other than American and British tourists who were always amused to hear me singing in English when I was busking. “Pull up a cajón,” she said. “Show me what you can do.”

I put a cajon down in front of her, sat my butt on it, and took out my guitar. And foot stand. Two of the three guitarists in the show we’d seen had played with the neck up in classical position. I figured that was a majority: go with that.

I spent a few moments tuning. The Ovation always held its tone better than my other guitars. I don’t know if the difference was the strings or the pegs or what.

I played. While busking I had been working on a Spanish-style reworking of “Grenadier.” The song is built on an E minor and A minor progression anyway, so it was a fit. The flamenco show had featured the guitars being played very hard, very loud, to be heard over the stamping and clapping. So I attacked this song–it was an aggressive song anyway. My eyes unfocused and away I went.

When I was done I focused back on her face. “This is what you want to do?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “But you said I should show you what I can do. Right now, that’s what I can do. But I want to learn to do… more.”

She looked at Orlando. He was hunched down on a cajon looking like he was trying to hide in plain sight.

She looked back at me, her lips pursed. “How hard do you want to work?”

“I’m not afraid of hard work.”

“Can you be here every morning at nine? Then you can take the guitar class at ten. One hour. And percussion follows that.”

“Is that one hour, also?”

“Yes.”

“I think if I have my afternoons free to busk, that should be fine.”

“Busk?” She didn’t know that word.

“Play for money in the park.”

“Ah, yes. You would have plenty of time for that. Be here tomorrow morning at nine sharp. Do not be late.”

I was not late.

—(Remember! The latest DGC Kickstarter funding campaign launched yesterday! One of the perks you can get is the unexpurgated novella that tells the story of Daron and Orlando in -*ahem*- explicit detail. -ctan)

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(Oh, yeah, and today’s flamenco-inspired music lesson. Have a look at Willie and Lobo, another duo, this one is a guitar with a violin. -d)